Monday, 9 November 2015

Week 13 - Final Demonstration and Course Reflection

Week 13 consisted of a final demonstration of the website to our peers and a final report outlining everything regarding the website. The tutors asked us several questions and the team answered them to the best of our ability. We were then tasked to go test the other teams' websites while they tested ours.

Overall, My initial expectations of DECO1800 were quite large - I expected that my knowledge of web design was going to be further developed and that my skills with implementing them would also reach a higher standard. Furthermore, I expected that I would gain some skills with programs such as PhotoShop - which, in turn, would assist in the development of the aforementioned web design. Another expectation that I wished to see fulfilled was my teamwork capabilities - I have had trouble in the past with teams that don't necessarily 
pull their weight - often due to a lack of communication. As a large part of the assessment in DECO1800 was group orientated, I wanted my group skills to reach a level I had considered satisfactory.
My expectations in regards to my skills in web design increasing were indeed met - I learnt several new aspects of web design (such as APIs and JSON) and further developed with skills with JavaScript and HTML. Unfortunately I was not able to say the same of my skills with PhotoShop. While my skill with the program definitely did improve, it didn’t reach the standard I was hoping for - in fact, most of the visual editing I did was outside PhotoShop. In regards to my team skills, I was delighted to see my group become good friends over the course - which was a major asset to the assignment as we could readily rely on each other to have our respective parts finished within the deadlines. By using multi-user platforms such as Google Docs, we were also enabled to easily work on group projects together and this allowed for a higher level of work to be done much quicker than if separate documents were used.
Overall, the aspects which did meet my expectations (developing web design skills and teamwork) did so due to the fact that I was consistently trying to develop those as much as I could. However, I can't say the same about the other aspects (learning PhotoShop) - this is due to the fact that I didn’t necessarily need the skills - I had alternatives to it and even then it was rarely needed. This led to a revision of my expectations of the course -
while the first two expectations were kept, the last expectation was abandoned due a lack of need.
Throughout DECO1800, I was taught a variety of things which assisted in the development of the skills needed for the major project. The most important thing, by far, was what APIs were and how to implement them. As our website was heavily based around APIs this became an essential skill. Furthermore my team skills improved significantly over the duration of the course. In regards to what I would change in DECO1800, the only major changes I would make is how I approached the course (as the tutors and the classes themselves were more than satisfactory in my eyes). I noticed this while I was learning PhotoShop - the way I approached things that I didn’t really want to learn that much was less than satisfactory; in fact, had I kept a more enthusiastic approach, I wouldn’t have had to alter my expectations for the course.


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